The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

She still didn’t feel good about it. As with the case of Suirei, Maomao hated to leave things unresolved. But she knew that losing her head wouldn’t serve any purpose.

Gaoshun was attending the evening’s banquet, which was being held on a boat out on the lake. That meant a minimum of bodyguards, and Maomao stayed home. She was in her room, enjoying the night breeze.

Those feifa, she thought. They’d looked unusual. Someone had said they were the newest model. One could surmise they came from the west.

The west...

Maomao thought about the envoys who had come angling to make themselves the Emperor’s bride. What had they been doing when they went sneaking out of their rooms? Gaoshun had asked about women who carried secrets instead of children, but one might also carry out a plot. Maomao had thought that perhaps the women had been seducing court officials to turn them into coconspirators, but there was another possibility.

Every country desired the newest weaponry, but if one nation were to sell it openly to another, war could be the only result. The envoys’ country thus couldn’t sell arms openly. Yet neither could they sell them secretly, without going through the court...could they?

Perhaps the bridge we’re crossing is even more dangerous than I realized, Maomao thought.

Then again, perhaps they had an even bigger and more powerful backer.

There was no telling how much the men who had been arrested today would say, or even how much they knew. Maomao just hoped that whatever was going on would be nipped in the bud. She wasn’t soft enough to wish for the joy and happiness of other people, but if things around her were peaceful, it meant she, too, could live in peace.

She was just closing the curtain, thinking she might get some sleep, when there was a knock at the door. She jumped a little in spite of herself. Then she crept over and opened the door ever so slightly. She found herself confronted with the one person she least wanted to see at that moment.

Gaoshun was at the banquet, and Basen was probably with him. Why was this man the only one not attending?

“You don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to.” The lovely voice sounded subdued. Through the crack in the door, Maomao could see Jinshi turn and lean against the wall. “I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

Maomao didn’t say anything, but she leaned against the wall on her side, mirroring Jinshi. From the hallway she heard him sigh. Then came the sound of him scratching his head, scuffing his feet across the floor in frustration, and finally the sound of his hair hitting against the wall. (Was he shaking his head?) She didn’t have to be able to see him to know exactly how he must look at that moment. He wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t find the words. Maomao felt the same way.

She scratched the tip of her nose, a little annoyed. “I haven’t given it a second thought. In fact, I should apologize to you.” She’d been so insistent about “decently sized,” after all. Anyone would lash out. Even Jinshi. Even at Maomao.

On the other side of the wall, Jinshi grunted.

I wonder what he’s thinking. Maomao was borderline oblivious to people’s feelings, partly because she had never been that interested in them and partly because of the way she’d been raised. The inhabitants of the Verdigris House had taken good care of her when she was a baby, but work always came first, and she’d often been left by herself. She could cry, but no one would come to help her until they were done with their job. She was told she eventually ceased crying much at all—maybe she’d learned the lesson.

Perhaps that was behind it all, and perhaps not; Maomao didn’t know. But whatever the reason, she’d grown up not very sensitive to when people felt affection or, for that matter, hatred for her. It was what had allowed her to weather the storm in the Crystal Pavilion. She didn’t enjoy it, of course, but it bothered her much less than it did most people.

It also left her uncertain what to say to Jinshi—so she didn’t say anything. She was thinking as hard as she could, searching for the words. Finally she said, “There’s nothing to say. As far as I’m concerned, you are who you are, Master Jinshi.”

Shoot, she thought, shaking her head reprovingly at herself: she hadn’t meant to use his real name. Nonetheless, this was her truest and most heartfelt response.

So nobody stole the family jewels. So what? It wasn’t like she was going to see them. She’d consider the entire matter irrelevant to her.

“As far as you’re concerned, I am who I am, eh?” It was hard to name the tone in Jinshi’s voice: he sounded thrilled and forlorn at the same time. Maomao heard a rustling, as of Jinshi digging through something. Then a hand reached through the crack in the door. Maomao involuntarily took a step back. “Don’t be afraid,” Jinshi said. “I just want to give this to you.”

So saying, he set a cloth bundle on the crosspiece. Maomao reached out for it, curious, and her fingers brushed Jinshi’s. It was only for an instant; their hands had separated again almost before she had time to register his body heat.

“There’s something I promised myself I would tell you when I finally gave this to you. You’ll recall I started with that bear gall,” Jinshi said seriously.

Maomao, ever more intrigued, opened the bundle. Inside were several yellow stones.

“I’m all too aware that the knowledge may bring you trouble in the future, but I want you to know the truth.” Jinshi spoke softly, but with conviction.

These are... These are...

“That’s why I wanted you to accompany me on this trip.” He sounded like he was squeezing out the words one at a time. But they fell on deaf ears.

O...O...

“Ox bezoars!” Maomao cried with a leap. So rare and so precious, the thing that had haunted her dreams, and now it was here before her. Her eyes watered and her heart pounded a wild rhythm. She felt her breath coming hard.

Maomao threw open the door. Jinshi, taken completely by surprise, backed away.

“Thank you so much!” Maomao bowed.

“Ah, yes, I finally managed to get my hands on—hey! Don’t close that door! I wasn’t done talking...”

But Maomao slammed the door shut and threw the bar. She didn’t want anyone to interrupt her. She twirled a little twirl as she admired her precious ox stomach-stones. Her lips curled into an unusual shape: hoo hee hee!

She thought she heard pounding on the door, but it sounded distant, trivial, compared to the bezoars. They made her so happy they almost carried away Jinshi’s behavior that afternoon like a breeze. Maomao’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly hear anything else. She nuzzled her cheek against the stones as she dove into bed.

Kicking her legs heedlessly, she rolled among the sheets, stroking the bezoars with her finger. Just looking at them made her feel like she had the energy to work for a month without rest or sleep. (It was just a feeling, though. If she really did that, she would die.)

She couldn’t have cared less whether Jinshi was a eunuch or not. Whichever it was—or wasn’t—Maomao had nothing to say about the matter. However, she wasn’t so fickle as to be unmoved by a gift like this. She decided that if Jinshi should ever find himself cornered, his secret about to come out, then she would do the very best she could to help him:

If and when that moment comes...

...she would make him a real eunuch.

Quite apart from Maomao’s private resolution, the pounding on the door continued, but in her ears it seemed only a faint drumming in the background.

○●○

With the guest of honor safely returned, the afternoon banquet broke up in short order. The various officials made sure everyone knew how relieved they were, transparently toadying. One would never have guessed that a few hours before, they’d been making lewd jokes and snickering about having a little fun with a palace woman.

Gaoshun was worried about Jinshi’s obvious fatigue, but he knew he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it at the moment. There was no reason for “Gaoshun,” who was the attendant of the eunuch “Jinshi,” to pay any special attention to the guest of honor. Gaoshun was, after all, merely attending in his master’s place. It would be conspicuous if he were to act too interested. He had to trust his son Basen to help instead, but could Basen indeed be trusted to do a decent job?

When Lo-en was formally cleared of suspicion, he made no bones about how indignant he was over the entire affair, but he was a simple personality. Currently, he was quite satisfied with a banquet to cleanse his proverbial palate. Publicly, the story was that the guest of honor had left the banquet on a whim, and then come back again with no further complications—but most likely, everyone understood that this was a fiction. One group of officials had vanished in the interim and probably wouldn’t be seen again for some time.

They had to get some kind of information out of them about these new feifa. As for how that information would be obtained, Gaoshun preferred not to know. Anyway, he had work to do. Tonight’s banquet was being held on a boat out on the lake. The seemingly endless supply of wine and the crowd of gorgeous women seemed inspired by the old saying about “a lake of wine and a forest of flesh.”

Ugh, Gaoshun thought. He was a eunuch, at least as far as it went. He wasn’t about to be beguiled by some woman—and should he let himself, the consequences would be dire. He need only think of his wife, the mother of his son Basen, to quell so much as the desire to lay a finger on them.

Speaking of his son, the young man was slumped on the deck of the boat—whether sick from the rocking of the vessel, the quantity of wine, or the women’s copious perfume, it was hard to say. Gaoshun sighed: the boy still had a long way to go.

“This must be a terribly tedious affair for a eunuch,” said another guest who approached Gaoshun. He’d obviously noticed that Gaoshun’s only pastime was sampling the wine. The women fawning over the guests on the boat were younger than his own son. “It’s simply dreadful. To have something like this happen, and so soon after you incurred the wrath of the empress regnant!”

The wine seemed to have made the man garrulous—and bold. His remark carried an undertone of mockery.

It was true, though: Gaoshun had once possessed the clan name of Ma, the Horse, but he had angered the empress regnant. He had been given one of the most severe possible punishments—castration, followed by service in the palace—and forced to abandon his old name and call himself “Gaoshun” instead.

At this banquet, however, he was treated not as a eunuch, but as a member of the house of Ma. That was the position Gaoshun was currently supposed to occupy.

“All of that is in the past,” Gaoshun said. “Besides, there’s such a lovely moon tonight to keep me company as I drink.” That was all he said, then he looked up at the sky. The half-moon was indeed beautiful. He might even have enjoyed it, had it not been for the yammering, boastful men and flirtatious women.

“I must say, though, I’m a touch disappointed our gorgeous eunuch wasn’t able to attend,” the other man said. He was referring, of course, to Jinshi—and certainly not to the gentleman who was recuperating in his room at that moment.

“Officially, he has a cold. This time, the masked gentleman is here.”

“Hah! Yes, I suppose such a lovely face could provoke problems all its own if he were to be present.”

This gentleman who never took off his mask had, it was said, suffered severe burns to his face as a child, and had rarely appeared in public since. And he never removed his mask where people could see, no matter how hot it might be.

“Whatever the case, I see he’s not here tonight. I’m sure he must be tired.”

“So it would appear,” Gaoshun said blandly, taking care not to let his emotions show on his face.

The evening banquet would go ahead without its guest of honor. Gaoshun poured his wine into the water (ploop ploop ploop), watching the waves lap at the side of the boat. He wished the banquet would hurry up and end. The guest of honor wasn’t the only one who looked a little off. So did another member of Gaoshun’s party, the young woman who had come as his attendant.

It would be understandable if an ordinary young lady who had been swept up with an important personage in an attempt on his life were to find herself feeling rather cowed, but that young woman was made of sterner stuff than that. Anyway, she’d been acting a little strange, but not quite like someone who was afraid for her life. She was always courteous (albeit not too courteous) to the guest of honor, but now she appeared more distant toward him.

Had he managed to tell her, then?

She was a smart young lady—it shouldn’t be surprising if she took that attitude toward him, in light of what it meant for her own future. In fact, the change was subtle enough that anyone who hadn’t known her for some time might have missed it. Passing marks for her.

It had been necessary to let her know, considering what might befall the guest of honor in the future. Gaoshun felt bad for the young woman, but it should also have shown her how useful they found her. The more cards one had in one’s hand when things turned ugly, the better. Let people say that the way those cards were gained sometimes required cruelty. He could live with that.

“The Emperor himself must worry, with him being who he is. And now all that’s happened here...” The official ran his fingers through his beard and sighed. There was a tacit understanding of who had done what. It wasn’t a wise subject to bring up, but maybe it was the wine talking. “With him as the next in line for the succession...”

The man hardly sounded reverential as he spoke. But who could blame him? The Imperial younger brother almost never left his room, and anytime he did appear in public, he wore a mask. No one considered him fit to conduct politics.

And it was the Emperor’s younger brother who was the guest of honor at this hunt.

Many of the officials gathered here had probably come in part out of morbid interest, drawn by this chance to get a look at the prince who was so rarely seen. Not, of course, that they had seen or would ever have seen his actual face. No doubt they now regretted their interest, in light of the attempt on the guest’s life. The fact that the banquet was in full swing despite his absence spoke to how desperate everyone was to dispel their despondence.

One suspected there had been a desire to ascertain exactly what kind of person the royal successor was. And now, this official had determined that the answer was: incompetent. Reactions to the obvious deception tended to be twofold: either one decided incompetence was the only explanation, or one chose to watch further. Having settled on the former gave this official a pretext to speak to the eunuch Gaoshun.

“Have none of the consorts become with child since the passing of the Imperial Heir last year?” he asked. This, Gaoshun realized, was what he was really interested in. Who had gotten pregnant, which consort it was, and whether she gave birth to a boy or a girl, could have a seismic effect on palace politics.

Gaoshun slowly shook his head. “No, sadly. But there are a great many consorts, and I’m sure one of them will become pregnant sooner or later.”

“I see, I see. Should that happen...” The official glanced at the bower amidships. There could be seen a portly court official: the host of their festivities, Shishou. It was hard to say whether he was enjoying the guests or simply contemplating everyone around him.

No relatives of the other high consorts were present. It only made sense, this being Shishou’s hunt.

The other official left Gaoshun alone, his apple-polishing done for the evening. Gaoshun let out a long sigh and poured himself more wine. Even as he drank a sip, enjoying the company of the lovely moon, he wondered what the guest of honor, Jinshi—or rather, Ka Zuigetsu—was doing at that moment.

Ka Zuigetsu.

The number of people in this country who could boast the character ka, flower, in their name was limited. In fact, at the moment, there were only two of them.

One was the man who stood at the very apex of power in this nation. The other was his younger brother.